Black On Black Project @ Ten
In the last decade, the Black On Black Project evolved: From exhibitions to short films to working in communities and creating research-based projects, we have posed questions about issues and created connections between people and to resources.
Across North Carolina, we’ve studied with communities to share our collective stories. The Project placed value on issues raised by community members and stories in their multiple forms — human, historical, intellectual, geographic — and sought to convey the complexity rather than simplicity of the human experience. We’ve tried to offer multiple points of entry for audiences to explore the state’s deep histories and encouraged the student in each of us to learn, teaching through storytelling and telling stories through teaching. The aim has been to share the truest social portrait of our culture and to create experiences that were not "about" us but "of" us.
As we study and reflect on a decade of the Project’s work, we are producing activations to nourish our cultural past, deepening our study, our understanding, and our connection. We are patterning our thematic threads — the importance of origin, Black self-determinism, and the value of education — across three North Carolina cities: Raleigh, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem. In the book of essays Intellectual Warfare, scholar Jacob H. Carruthers writes, "In the domain of culture, our artists must paint, sculpt, write, sing, and dance the themes of Africa with a greater emphasis on antiquity." The artists and communities across the state with whom we’ve worked have taught us through intergenerational transmission, and the following activations are our latest attempts at continuing this practice:
Delta Arts Center, Winston-Salem: The Undying Yearning exhibition highlights Black self-determinism through thriving Black educational institutions: the "Big Four," the historically Black high schools in Winston-Salem, and Kate Bitting Reynolds Memorial Hospital School of Nursing.
When: October 13 to December 31, 2026. Learn more.
Anchorlight, Raleigh: No Study; No Celebration is a series of convenings that studies works from the Black On Black Project's three titular exhibitions — Black On Black, BOBV2, BOBV3 — in the context of North Carolina's history. Featuring artists and community members, discussions will center art as entry points to meaningful conversation.
When: Sunday, November 29, 2026, at 2 p.m. with André Leon Gray // Learn more
When: Sunday December 6, 2026, at 2 p.m. with William Paul Thomas // Learn more
When: Sunday, December 13, 2026, at 2 p.m. with Precious D. Lovell // Learn more
DREAMS Center for Arts Education, Wilmington: Continuum of Change II, a one-night event, will explore the importance of Pine Forest Cemetery, Williston Alumni Community Choir, and Community Hospital. The event will highlight the enduring impact of these institutions in the Port City and is an extension of the 2021 exhibition Continuum of Change.
When: The event will occur in 2027.
Join us to connect, reconnect, hear and see our collective stories, and to share your own.